Monday, May 30, 2005
The So-Called War On Terror:
Paul Krugman: Too Few, Yet Too Many
"One of the more bizarre aspects of the Iraq war has been President Bush's repeated insistence that his generals tell him they have enough troops. Even more bizarrely, it may be true - I mean, that his generals tell him that they have enough troops, not that they actually have enough. An article in yesterday's Baltimore Sun explains why.
The article tells the tale of John Riggs, a former Army commander, who 'publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan' - then abruptly found himself forced into retirement at a reduced rank, which normally only happens as a result of a major scandal.
The truth, of course, is that there aren't nearly enough troops. 'Basically, we've got all the toys, but not enough boys,' a Marine major in Anbar Province told The Los Angeles Times.
Yet it's also true, in a different sense, that we have too many troops in Iraq.
Back in September 2003 a report by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the size of the U.S. force in Iraq would have to start shrinking rapidly in the spring of 2004 if the Army wanted to 'maintain training and readiness levels, limit family separation and involuntary mobilization, and retain high-quality personnel.'
Let me put that in plainer English: our all-volunteer military is based on an implicit promise that those who serve their country in times of danger will also be able to get on with their lives. Full-time soldiers expect to spend enough time at home base to keep their marriages alive and see their children growing up. Reservists expect to be called up infrequently enough, and for short enough tours of duty, that they can hold on to their civilian jobs.
To keep that promise, the Army has learned that it needs to follow certain rules, such as not deploying more than a third of the full-time forces overseas except during emergencies. The budget office analysis was based on those rules.
But the Bush administration, which was ready neither to look for a way out of Iraq nor to admit that staying there would require a much bigger army, simply threw out the rulebook. Regular soldiers are spending a lot more than a third of their time overseas, and many reservists are finding their civilian lives destroyed by repeated, long-term call-ups.
Two things make the burden of repeated deployments even harder to bear. One is the intensity of the conflict. In Slate, Phillip Carter and Owen West, who adjusted casualty figures to take account of force size and improvements in battlefield medicine (which allow more of the severely wounded to survive), concluded that 'infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966.'
The other is the way in which the administration cuts corners when it comes to supporting the troops. From their foot-dragging on armoring Humvees to their apparent policy of denying long-term disability payments to as many of the wounded as possible, officials seem almost pathologically determined to nickel-and-dime those who put their lives on the line for their country.
Now, predictably, the supply of volunteers is drying up..."
Howard Zinn: Against Discouragement
The (Fleeting) Right To Privacy:
Reuters: Secret Plan to Track US 'Terror Mail'
"A Bush administration proposal would grant the FBI broad authority to track the mail of people in terrorism investigations, The New York Times reported in its Saturday editions.
Citing government officials who spoke on Friday, the newspaper reported that the proposal, to be considered next week in a closed-door Senate Intelligence Committee meeting, would allow the FBI to direct postal officials to turn in names, addresses and other material on the outside of letters sent to or from people connected to foreign intelligence investigations.
But the Postal Service is raising privacy concerns about the plan to carry out such operations, called mail covers, the Times said.
According to a draft of the bill obtained by the Times, the plan would effectively eliminate postal inspectors' discretion in deciding when mail covers are needed, giving sole authority to the FBI, if it decides that the material is 'relevant to an authorized investigation to obtain foreign intelligence.'
The proposal would not allow the FBI to open mail or review its contents, however. According to the officials who spoke to the Times, that would require a search warrant.
The proposal is part of a larger package that strengthens the FBI's authority to demand business records in intelligence gathering without judicial or grand jury approval, the Times said..."
Energy Politics:
San Francisco Chronicle: Fueling America: Canadian Oil Showdown
Paul Krugman: Too Few, Yet Too Many
"One of the more bizarre aspects of the Iraq war has been President Bush's repeated insistence that his generals tell him they have enough troops. Even more bizarrely, it may be true - I mean, that his generals tell him that they have enough troops, not that they actually have enough. An article in yesterday's Baltimore Sun explains why.
The article tells the tale of John Riggs, a former Army commander, who 'publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan' - then abruptly found himself forced into retirement at a reduced rank, which normally only happens as a result of a major scandal.
The truth, of course, is that there aren't nearly enough troops. 'Basically, we've got all the toys, but not enough boys,' a Marine major in Anbar Province told The Los Angeles Times.
Yet it's also true, in a different sense, that we have too many troops in Iraq.
Back in September 2003 a report by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the size of the U.S. force in Iraq would have to start shrinking rapidly in the spring of 2004 if the Army wanted to 'maintain training and readiness levels, limit family separation and involuntary mobilization, and retain high-quality personnel.'
Let me put that in plainer English: our all-volunteer military is based on an implicit promise that those who serve their country in times of danger will also be able to get on with their lives. Full-time soldiers expect to spend enough time at home base to keep their marriages alive and see their children growing up. Reservists expect to be called up infrequently enough, and for short enough tours of duty, that they can hold on to their civilian jobs.
To keep that promise, the Army has learned that it needs to follow certain rules, such as not deploying more than a third of the full-time forces overseas except during emergencies. The budget office analysis was based on those rules.
But the Bush administration, which was ready neither to look for a way out of Iraq nor to admit that staying there would require a much bigger army, simply threw out the rulebook. Regular soldiers are spending a lot more than a third of their time overseas, and many reservists are finding their civilian lives destroyed by repeated, long-term call-ups.
Two things make the burden of repeated deployments even harder to bear. One is the intensity of the conflict. In Slate, Phillip Carter and Owen West, who adjusted casualty figures to take account of force size and improvements in battlefield medicine (which allow more of the severely wounded to survive), concluded that 'infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966.'
The other is the way in which the administration cuts corners when it comes to supporting the troops. From their foot-dragging on armoring Humvees to their apparent policy of denying long-term disability payments to as many of the wounded as possible, officials seem almost pathologically determined to nickel-and-dime those who put their lives on the line for their country.
Now, predictably, the supply of volunteers is drying up..."
Howard Zinn: Against Discouragement
The (Fleeting) Right To Privacy:
Reuters: Secret Plan to Track US 'Terror Mail'
"A Bush administration proposal would grant the FBI broad authority to track the mail of people in terrorism investigations, The New York Times reported in its Saturday editions.
Citing government officials who spoke on Friday, the newspaper reported that the proposal, to be considered next week in a closed-door Senate Intelligence Committee meeting, would allow the FBI to direct postal officials to turn in names, addresses and other material on the outside of letters sent to or from people connected to foreign intelligence investigations.
But the Postal Service is raising privacy concerns about the plan to carry out such operations, called mail covers, the Times said.
According to a draft of the bill obtained by the Times, the plan would effectively eliminate postal inspectors' discretion in deciding when mail covers are needed, giving sole authority to the FBI, if it decides that the material is 'relevant to an authorized investigation to obtain foreign intelligence.'
The proposal would not allow the FBI to open mail or review its contents, however. According to the officials who spoke to the Times, that would require a search warrant.
The proposal is part of a larger package that strengthens the FBI's authority to demand business records in intelligence gathering without judicial or grand jury approval, the Times said..."
Energy Politics:
San Francisco Chronicle: Fueling America: Canadian Oil Showdown
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Energy Politics:
Steve Weissman: Neo-Cons and Theo-Cons at Armageddon
"...Decades before Mr. Bush showed the slightest interest in the wider world, neo-conservatives like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz were honing this imperial energy policy, which goes far beyond securing enough oil for Americans to burn.
Control of global reserves - and the ability to reward or punish rivals who need the oil and natural gas - is for the neo-cons a primary lever to enhance American power over other nations.
To be fair, they did not invent the idea, parts of which reach back at least as far as earlier empire-builders like Teddy Roosevelt, Admiral Alfred Mahan, and their British counterpart, Lord Curzon. The idea of using oil as a lever later shaped America's conflict with Japan in the run-up to World War II. Even more, it shaped the way Washington kept the Japanese in check after the war.
Perle learned the geo-political uses of oil as a top staff aide to Democratic Senator Henry 'Scoop' Jackson, one of the country's leading energy strategists. The eager young aide worked with Jackson all during the 1970s, when American policy-makers were considering a wide range of responses to OPEC's new power and the oil crisis it created.
Wolfowitz got his education as as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during the creation of the Carter Doctrine, which President Jimmy Carter announced in his 1980 State of the Union message. Opening the door to much that has followed, this unilateral edict declared Persian Gulf oil reserves off-limits to domination by any of America's current or potential rivals.
In their many years of pushing Washington to invade Iraq, the neo-cons consistently emphasized the strategic importance of controlling as much of the world's energy supplies as possible. Nowhere did they make this clearer than in the 18 February 1992 draft of the Defense Planning Guidance. Its principal authors were Wolfowitz and Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.
Leaked to the press at the time, the classified draft was widely quoted in the New York Times and other newspapers. What Wolfowitz and Libby wrote back then directly addresses two of today's most pressing questions: Why did the Bush administration invade Iraq? And, why do so few of our foreign policy leaders - Democrats as well as Republicans - now refuse even to consider pulling out our troops and military bases.
Wolfowitz and Libby explained how America would use its political and military muscle to prevent the emergence of any rival super-power, whether Russia, China, or our Western European allies. The United States, said the authors, 'must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.'
To do this, they said, the US 'must sufficiently account for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order.'
The key mechanism was to provide a steady supply of oil and natural gas, but a supply with America's hand on the stopcock. 'In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil.'
Wolfowitz and Libby wrote the draft just after the first Gulf War, and horrified the elder Bush with their candor. He was especially embarrassed since the leak came before the Pentagon could 'scrub' the language and wrap its meaning in euphemism for wider dissemination. The younger Bush and his administration seem to prefer the blunter language.
In their 1992 draft, Wolfowitz and Libby signal the geo-political thinking that led the neo-cons to urge invading Iraq long before 9/11. They explain why Washington is now building as many as 14 permanent military bases there. And they suggest why so few of our foreign policy leaders - whether neo-cons or tough-talking, 'muscular' Democrats - will ever give up the Iraqi bases without a fight.
The military infrastructure now in Iraq is there to help protect and expand American control of oil and natural gas throughout the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and now Central Asia as well. And, as most Democratic or Republican policy-makers see it, this expanding control deters other countries from challenging America's status as 'the world's only remaining super-power,'..."
The White House Must Really Resent The FOIA:
AP: Judge Orders Govt. to Release Abuse Photos
"A federal judge has told the government it will have to release additional pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, civil rights lawyers said.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein, finding the public has a right to see the pictures, told the government Thursday he will sign an order requiring it to release them to the American Civil Liberties Union, the lawyers said.
The judge made the decision after he and government attorneys privately viewed a sampling of nine pictures resulting from an Army probe into abuse and torture at the prison. The pictures were given to the Army by a military policeman assigned there.
ACLU lawyer Megan Lewis told the judge she believes the government has pictures of abuse beyond the Abu Ghraib images that sparked outrage around the world after they were leaked to the media last year.
Some of the thousands of pages of documents the government has released to the ACLU seem to refer to such images, and the government has not denied that additional photos exist, she said.
The judge decided some pictures from Abu Graib could be released to comply with the Freedom of Information Act while others must be redacted or were not relevant to the ACLU's request, Lewis said.
She said the judge's findings likely would clear the way for the release of other pictures of detainees taken around the world by US authorities..."
The Oddly-Named 'PATRIOT' Act Bypasses The Fourth Amendment:
'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.'
AP: New Patriot Act Dramatically Expands Secret Searches
"The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is working on a bill that would renew the Patriot Act and expand government powers in the name of fighting terrorism, letting the FBI subpoena records without permission from a judge or grand jury.
Much of the debate in Congress has concerned possibly limiting some of the powers in the anti-terrorism law passed 45 days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But the measure being written by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., would give the FBI new power to issue administrative subpoenas, which are not reviewed by a judge or grand jury, for quickly obtaining records, electronic data or other evidence in terrorism investigations, according to aides for the GOP majority on the committee who briefed reporters Wednesday.
Recipients could challenge the subpoenas in court and the Bush administration would have to report to Congress twice a year exactly how it was using this investigatory power, the aides said.
The administration has sought this power for two years, but so far been rebuffed by lawmakers. It is far from certain that Congress will give the administration everything it wants this year.
Roberts' planned bill also would make it easier for prosecutors to use special court-approved warrants for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies in criminal cases, the committee aides said.
Eight expiring sections of the law that deal with foreign intelligence investigations would become permanent, they said..."
Vocabulary for Discourse:
Bill Zide: A New Political Lexicon
"...At heart, what defines the current GOP and the right wing is ENTITLEMENT and FEAR. Everything they have done reflects this. They act as if they are entitled to the presidency - hence, their ability to ignore the questions about a stolen election or disenfranchised voters. They act entitled because they fear the reality of their own weakness and actions. Their values are based on the concept that they should get what they want because they are entitled to it by the bible or money or privilege. The irony is that they live in a permanent state of fear. Fear of losing their positions and money. Fear of the rest of the world. Fear of reality. Fear of the future. Thus, their terminology often drips with fear and entitlement. Just the term 'War on Terror' (not Terrorism, which is the actual problem) tells you who they are. They don't just sell fear. They revel in it. The problem is that fear is weakness, not strength, and those who live by fear tend to die by it. Therefore it is crucial that we frame them using their own language and terminology against them. An excellent example is 'Fuzzy Math.' This defines them in so many ways while seeming innocuous. Bush tried to use it against Gore, but it describes his economic policy brilliantly. Beat them with their own stick and make them pay for every slip they make. Use the words they have already associated themselves with against them [Lexicon follows]..."
Steve Weissman: Neo-Cons and Theo-Cons at Armageddon
"...Decades before Mr. Bush showed the slightest interest in the wider world, neo-conservatives like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz were honing this imperial energy policy, which goes far beyond securing enough oil for Americans to burn.
Control of global reserves - and the ability to reward or punish rivals who need the oil and natural gas - is for the neo-cons a primary lever to enhance American power over other nations.
To be fair, they did not invent the idea, parts of which reach back at least as far as earlier empire-builders like Teddy Roosevelt, Admiral Alfred Mahan, and their British counterpart, Lord Curzon. The idea of using oil as a lever later shaped America's conflict with Japan in the run-up to World War II. Even more, it shaped the way Washington kept the Japanese in check after the war.
Perle learned the geo-political uses of oil as a top staff aide to Democratic Senator Henry 'Scoop' Jackson, one of the country's leading energy strategists. The eager young aide worked with Jackson all during the 1970s, when American policy-makers were considering a wide range of responses to OPEC's new power and the oil crisis it created.
Wolfowitz got his education as as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during the creation of the Carter Doctrine, which President Jimmy Carter announced in his 1980 State of the Union message. Opening the door to much that has followed, this unilateral edict declared Persian Gulf oil reserves off-limits to domination by any of America's current or potential rivals.
In their many years of pushing Washington to invade Iraq, the neo-cons consistently emphasized the strategic importance of controlling as much of the world's energy supplies as possible. Nowhere did they make this clearer than in the 18 February 1992 draft of the Defense Planning Guidance. Its principal authors were Wolfowitz and Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.
Leaked to the press at the time, the classified draft was widely quoted in the New York Times and other newspapers. What Wolfowitz and Libby wrote back then directly addresses two of today's most pressing questions: Why did the Bush administration invade Iraq? And, why do so few of our foreign policy leaders - Democrats as well as Republicans - now refuse even to consider pulling out our troops and military bases.
Wolfowitz and Libby explained how America would use its political and military muscle to prevent the emergence of any rival super-power, whether Russia, China, or our Western European allies. The United States, said the authors, 'must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.'
To do this, they said, the US 'must sufficiently account for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order.'
The key mechanism was to provide a steady supply of oil and natural gas, but a supply with America's hand on the stopcock. 'In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil.'
Wolfowitz and Libby wrote the draft just after the first Gulf War, and horrified the elder Bush with their candor. He was especially embarrassed since the leak came before the Pentagon could 'scrub' the language and wrap its meaning in euphemism for wider dissemination. The younger Bush and his administration seem to prefer the blunter language.
In their 1992 draft, Wolfowitz and Libby signal the geo-political thinking that led the neo-cons to urge invading Iraq long before 9/11. They explain why Washington is now building as many as 14 permanent military bases there. And they suggest why so few of our foreign policy leaders - whether neo-cons or tough-talking, 'muscular' Democrats - will ever give up the Iraqi bases without a fight.
The military infrastructure now in Iraq is there to help protect and expand American control of oil and natural gas throughout the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and now Central Asia as well. And, as most Democratic or Republican policy-makers see it, this expanding control deters other countries from challenging America's status as 'the world's only remaining super-power,'..."
The White House Must Really Resent The FOIA:
AP: Judge Orders Govt. to Release Abuse Photos
"A federal judge has told the government it will have to release additional pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, civil rights lawyers said.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein, finding the public has a right to see the pictures, told the government Thursday he will sign an order requiring it to release them to the American Civil Liberties Union, the lawyers said.
The judge made the decision after he and government attorneys privately viewed a sampling of nine pictures resulting from an Army probe into abuse and torture at the prison. The pictures were given to the Army by a military policeman assigned there.
ACLU lawyer Megan Lewis told the judge she believes the government has pictures of abuse beyond the Abu Ghraib images that sparked outrage around the world after they were leaked to the media last year.
Some of the thousands of pages of documents the government has released to the ACLU seem to refer to such images, and the government has not denied that additional photos exist, she said.
The judge decided some pictures from Abu Graib could be released to comply with the Freedom of Information Act while others must be redacted or were not relevant to the ACLU's request, Lewis said.
She said the judge's findings likely would clear the way for the release of other pictures of detainees taken around the world by US authorities..."
The Oddly-Named 'PATRIOT' Act Bypasses The Fourth Amendment:
'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.'
AP: New Patriot Act Dramatically Expands Secret Searches
"The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is working on a bill that would renew the Patriot Act and expand government powers in the name of fighting terrorism, letting the FBI subpoena records without permission from a judge or grand jury.
Much of the debate in Congress has concerned possibly limiting some of the powers in the anti-terrorism law passed 45 days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But the measure being written by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., would give the FBI new power to issue administrative subpoenas, which are not reviewed by a judge or grand jury, for quickly obtaining records, electronic data or other evidence in terrorism investigations, according to aides for the GOP majority on the committee who briefed reporters Wednesday.
Recipients could challenge the subpoenas in court and the Bush administration would have to report to Congress twice a year exactly how it was using this investigatory power, the aides said.
The administration has sought this power for two years, but so far been rebuffed by lawmakers. It is far from certain that Congress will give the administration everything it wants this year.
Roberts' planned bill also would make it easier for prosecutors to use special court-approved warrants for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies in criminal cases, the committee aides said.
Eight expiring sections of the law that deal with foreign intelligence investigations would become permanent, they said..."
Vocabulary for Discourse:
Bill Zide: A New Political Lexicon
"...At heart, what defines the current GOP and the right wing is ENTITLEMENT and FEAR. Everything they have done reflects this. They act as if they are entitled to the presidency - hence, their ability to ignore the questions about a stolen election or disenfranchised voters. They act entitled because they fear the reality of their own weakness and actions. Their values are based on the concept that they should get what they want because they are entitled to it by the bible or money or privilege. The irony is that they live in a permanent state of fear. Fear of losing their positions and money. Fear of the rest of the world. Fear of reality. Fear of the future. Thus, their terminology often drips with fear and entitlement. Just the term 'War on Terror' (not Terrorism, which is the actual problem) tells you who they are. They don't just sell fear. They revel in it. The problem is that fear is weakness, not strength, and those who live by fear tend to die by it. Therefore it is crucial that we frame them using their own language and terminology against them. An excellent example is 'Fuzzy Math.' This defines them in so many ways while seeming innocuous. Bush tried to use it against Gore, but it describes his economic policy brilliantly. Beat them with their own stick and make them pay for every slip they make. Use the words they have already associated themselves with against them [Lexicon follows]..."
Friday, May 27, 2005
Domestic Policy:
Sidney Blumenthal: Bush's War Comes Home
"President Bush's drive for absolute power has momentarily stalled. In a single coup, he planned to take over all the institutions of government. By crushing the traditions of the Senate he would pack the courts, especially the supreme court, with lockstep ideologues. Sheer force would prevail. But just as his blitzkrieg reached the outskirts of his objective, he was struck by a mutiny. Within the span of 24 hours he lost control not only of the Senate but temporarily of the House of Representatives, which was supposed to be regimented by unquestioned loyalty. Now he prepares to launch a counterattack - against the dissident elements of his own party..."
Molly Ivins: Irony Overflowing
"I often complain about the excess of irony in our national life, but this week, if you're not begoshed by the irony surplus, you haven't been paying attention. If we could just figure out a way to get energy out of the stuff, we'd be set for life.
Liberals for the filibuster; conservatives against it - hilarious. Pentagon loses track of more than $1 trillion, and the Army can't find 56 airplanes, 32 tanks and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units. Not to mention Osama bin Laden. And more:
Right-wing Republicans fight to make the world safe from 'judicial activists' by appointing Priscilla Owen - the biggest, baddest, worstest judicial activist Texas ever produced - to the federal bench.
Owen is so notorious for reading her own opinions into the law, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, then her colleague on the Texas Supreme Court, described her opinion in a parental consent case as 'an unconscionable act of judicial activism,'..."
On Torture:
Thomas Friedman: Just Shut It Down
"Shut it down. Just shut it down.
I am talking about the war-on-terrorism P.O.W. camp at Guantánamo Bay. Just shut it down and then plow it under. It has become worse than an embarrassment. I am convinced that more Americans are dying and will die if we keep the Gitmo prison open than if we shut it down. So, please, Mr. President, just shut it down..."
The Rule of Law:
NY Times: U.S. Indicts 4 Tennessee Lawmakers in Corruption Case
"Four members of the Tennessee legislature, including a member of the Ford family dynasty in Memphis, were indicted on Thursday after a two-year undercover operation by the F.B.I. whose outcome has rattled the state's political establishment.
Among those indicted was State Senator John N. Ford, one of the most powerful politicians in Memphis, who was charged with extorting $55,000 from a bogus company created by the bureau. He was also indicted on three counts of threatening to shoot or kill anyone he suspected was an F.B.I. agent or was trying to set him up..."
Iraq:
NY Times: Marine Cleared in Deaths of 2 Insurgents in Iraq
"A Marine Corps officer accused of murdering two Iraqis suspected of being insurgents last year was cleared of criminal wrongdoing Thursday, by the same two-star general who ordered a formal inquiry into the matter. Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, commander of the Second Marine Division, found that evidence presented at a hearing last month did not support accusations of premeditated murder against Second Lt. Ilario Pantano, a Manhattan native who now holds a training position at Camp Lejeune, N.C., a Marine Corps spokesman said...
...The killings occurred on April 15, 2004, near Mahmudiyah, as Lieutenant Pantano led a platoon to search a house suspected of being an insurgent lair. When the marines approached, two men left in a white sedan, according to testimony at the hearing, but were stopped on Lieutenant Pantano's order. No weapons were found on the men, who were handcuffed as a Navy corpsman checked their car for weapons. When he was told that weapons and other contraband were found inside the house, Lieutenant Pantano ordered the men unhandcuffed and then directed them to search their car themselves.
Lieutenant Pantano supervised while the corpsman, George Gobles, and a Marine sergeant, Daniel Coburn, stood facing away as sentries. Lieutenant Pantano said that the men made a threatening move toward him after repeatedly talking with each other in Arabic and that he fired, emptying his M-16 rifle's magazine. He reloaded and emptied the second one, a total of as many as 50 bullets.
He acknowledged placing a hand-scrawled cardboard sign reading 'No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy' atop the car, against which the bodies lay. The sign and the number of rounds fired, according to lieutenant Pantano's statement, were meant to send a message to other Iraqis about what happens to those who join insurgents..."
Sidney Blumenthal: Bush's War Comes Home
"President Bush's drive for absolute power has momentarily stalled. In a single coup, he planned to take over all the institutions of government. By crushing the traditions of the Senate he would pack the courts, especially the supreme court, with lockstep ideologues. Sheer force would prevail. But just as his blitzkrieg reached the outskirts of his objective, he was struck by a mutiny. Within the span of 24 hours he lost control not only of the Senate but temporarily of the House of Representatives, which was supposed to be regimented by unquestioned loyalty. Now he prepares to launch a counterattack - against the dissident elements of his own party..."
Molly Ivins: Irony Overflowing
"I often complain about the excess of irony in our national life, but this week, if you're not begoshed by the irony surplus, you haven't been paying attention. If we could just figure out a way to get energy out of the stuff, we'd be set for life.
Liberals for the filibuster; conservatives against it - hilarious. Pentagon loses track of more than $1 trillion, and the Army can't find 56 airplanes, 32 tanks and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units. Not to mention Osama bin Laden. And more:
Right-wing Republicans fight to make the world safe from 'judicial activists' by appointing Priscilla Owen - the biggest, baddest, worstest judicial activist Texas ever produced - to the federal bench.
Owen is so notorious for reading her own opinions into the law, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, then her colleague on the Texas Supreme Court, described her opinion in a parental consent case as 'an unconscionable act of judicial activism,'..."
On Torture:
Thomas Friedman: Just Shut It Down
"Shut it down. Just shut it down.
I am talking about the war-on-terrorism P.O.W. camp at Guantánamo Bay. Just shut it down and then plow it under. It has become worse than an embarrassment. I am convinced that more Americans are dying and will die if we keep the Gitmo prison open than if we shut it down. So, please, Mr. President, just shut it down..."
The Rule of Law:
NY Times: U.S. Indicts 4 Tennessee Lawmakers in Corruption Case
"Four members of the Tennessee legislature, including a member of the Ford family dynasty in Memphis, were indicted on Thursday after a two-year undercover operation by the F.B.I. whose outcome has rattled the state's political establishment.
Among those indicted was State Senator John N. Ford, one of the most powerful politicians in Memphis, who was charged with extorting $55,000 from a bogus company created by the bureau. He was also indicted on three counts of threatening to shoot or kill anyone he suspected was an F.B.I. agent or was trying to set him up..."
Iraq:
NY Times: Marine Cleared in Deaths of 2 Insurgents in Iraq
"A Marine Corps officer accused of murdering two Iraqis suspected of being insurgents last year was cleared of criminal wrongdoing Thursday, by the same two-star general who ordered a formal inquiry into the matter. Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, commander of the Second Marine Division, found that evidence presented at a hearing last month did not support accusations of premeditated murder against Second Lt. Ilario Pantano, a Manhattan native who now holds a training position at Camp Lejeune, N.C., a Marine Corps spokesman said...
...The killings occurred on April 15, 2004, near Mahmudiyah, as Lieutenant Pantano led a platoon to search a house suspected of being an insurgent lair. When the marines approached, two men left in a white sedan, according to testimony at the hearing, but were stopped on Lieutenant Pantano's order. No weapons were found on the men, who were handcuffed as a Navy corpsman checked their car for weapons. When he was told that weapons and other contraband were found inside the house, Lieutenant Pantano ordered the men unhandcuffed and then directed them to search their car themselves.
Lieutenant Pantano supervised while the corpsman, George Gobles, and a Marine sergeant, Daniel Coburn, stood facing away as sentries. Lieutenant Pantano said that the men made a threatening move toward him after repeatedly talking with each other in Arabic and that he fired, emptying his M-16 rifle's magazine. He reloaded and emptied the second one, a total of as many as 50 bullets.
He acknowledged placing a hand-scrawled cardboard sign reading 'No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy' atop the car, against which the bodies lay. The sign and the number of rounds fired, according to lieutenant Pantano's statement, were meant to send a message to other Iraqis about what happens to those who join insurgents..."
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Who Is Watching Out For Iraq's Oil Money?
AP: $100 Million in Iraqi Oil Money 'Mishandled'
"The board monitoring Iraq's oil revenue said Monday that Iraqi leaders mishandled about $100 million in oil money meant for development in the six months after they took power from the U.S. government.
The International Advisory and Monitoring Board said a new audit also found the now-defunct U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority used questionable accounting practices with money from the Development Fund for Iraq. It also singled out the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for refusing to provide files for contracts that were funded with Iraqi oil revenue..."
Energy Policy:
While this commentary is about the UK primarily, parallels can be drawn with the Bush administration's push for nuclear power for the electrical grid, in space, and on the battlefield...
Polly Toynbee: Capitulation to the nuclear lobby is a politics of despair
AP: $100 Million in Iraqi Oil Money 'Mishandled'
"The board monitoring Iraq's oil revenue said Monday that Iraqi leaders mishandled about $100 million in oil money meant for development in the six months after they took power from the U.S. government.
The International Advisory and Monitoring Board said a new audit also found the now-defunct U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority used questionable accounting practices with money from the Development Fund for Iraq. It also singled out the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for refusing to provide files for contracts that were funded with Iraqi oil revenue..."
Energy Policy:
While this commentary is about the UK primarily, parallels can be drawn with the Bush administration's push for nuclear power for the electrical grid, in space, and on the battlefield...
Polly Toynbee: Capitulation to the nuclear lobby is a politics of despair
Monday, May 23, 2005
Expensive, Yet Ineffectual, So-Called Homeland Security:
Washington Post: Rush for Homeland Security Led to Abuse
"After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the U.S. government rushed to secure the nation. Billions of dollars were spent to protect Americans with improved passenger screening, bomb-detection machines at airports, radiation monitors at ports and computer networks to identify suspected terrorists at the borders.
Government leaders say the nation is safer than it was before Sept. 11, 2001. But the government's internal audits have repeatedly questioned the cost and effectiveness of the equipment and security systems bought from corporations that received a torrent of money under loosened regulations, limited oversight and tight congressional deadlines..."
On Torture:
Seymour Hersh: The Unknown Unknowns of the Abu Ghraib Scandal
"...I know that the decision was made inside the Pentagon in the first weeks of the Afghanistan war - which seemed 'won' by December 2001 - to indefinitely detain scores of prisoners who were accumulating daily at American staging posts throughout the country. At the time, according to a memo, in my possession, addressed to Donald Rumsfeld, there were '800-900 Pakistani boys 13-15 years of age in custody'. I could not learn if some or all of them have been released, or if some are still being held.
A Pentagon spokesman, when asked to comment, said that he had no information to substantiate the number in the document, and that there were currently about 100 juveniles being held in Iraq and Afghanistan; he did not address detainees held elsewhere. He said they received some special care, but added 'age is not a determining factor in detention ... As with all the detainees, their release is contingent upon the determination that they are not a threat and that they are of no further intelligence value. Unfortunately, we have found that ... age does not necessarily diminish threat potential.'
The 10 official inquiries into Abu Ghraib are asking the wrong questions, at least in terms of apportioning ultimate responsibility for the treatment of prisoners. The question that never gets adequately answered is this: what did the president do after being told about Abu Ghraib? It is here that chronology becomes very important...
...Despite Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo - not to mention Iraq and the failure of intelligence - and the various roles they played in what went wrong, Rumsfeld kept his job; Rice was promoted to secretary of state; Alberto Gonzales, who commissioned the memos justifying torture, became attorney general; deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz was nominated to the presidency of the World Bank; and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defence for intelligence and one of those most directly involved in the policies on prisoners, was still one of Rumsfeld's closest confidants. President Bush, asked about accountability, told the Washington Post before his second inauguration that the American people had supplied all the accountability needed - by re-electing him. Only seven enlisted men and women have been charged or pleaded guilty to offences relating to Abu Ghraib. No officer is facing criminal proceedings..."
Without The FOIA, We'd Never Know:
AP: Chicken Farmer, Invalid among Gitmo Detainees
"Some boast they were Taliban fighters. Others - an invalid, a chicken farmer, a nomad, a nervous name-dropper - say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were plucked from Afghanistan, Pakistan or other countries and flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their stories are tucked inside nearly 2,000 pages of documents the U.S. government released to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit..."
Washington Post: Rush for Homeland Security Led to Abuse
"After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the U.S. government rushed to secure the nation. Billions of dollars were spent to protect Americans with improved passenger screening, bomb-detection machines at airports, radiation monitors at ports and computer networks to identify suspected terrorists at the borders.
Government leaders say the nation is safer than it was before Sept. 11, 2001. But the government's internal audits have repeatedly questioned the cost and effectiveness of the equipment and security systems bought from corporations that received a torrent of money under loosened regulations, limited oversight and tight congressional deadlines..."
On Torture:
Seymour Hersh: The Unknown Unknowns of the Abu Ghraib Scandal
"...I know that the decision was made inside the Pentagon in the first weeks of the Afghanistan war - which seemed 'won' by December 2001 - to indefinitely detain scores of prisoners who were accumulating daily at American staging posts throughout the country. At the time, according to a memo, in my possession, addressed to Donald Rumsfeld, there were '800-900 Pakistani boys 13-15 years of age in custody'. I could not learn if some or all of them have been released, or if some are still being held.
A Pentagon spokesman, when asked to comment, said that he had no information to substantiate the number in the document, and that there were currently about 100 juveniles being held in Iraq and Afghanistan; he did not address detainees held elsewhere. He said they received some special care, but added 'age is not a determining factor in detention ... As with all the detainees, their release is contingent upon the determination that they are not a threat and that they are of no further intelligence value. Unfortunately, we have found that ... age does not necessarily diminish threat potential.'
The 10 official inquiries into Abu Ghraib are asking the wrong questions, at least in terms of apportioning ultimate responsibility for the treatment of prisoners. The question that never gets adequately answered is this: what did the president do after being told about Abu Ghraib? It is here that chronology becomes very important...
...Despite Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo - not to mention Iraq and the failure of intelligence - and the various roles they played in what went wrong, Rumsfeld kept his job; Rice was promoted to secretary of state; Alberto Gonzales, who commissioned the memos justifying torture, became attorney general; deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz was nominated to the presidency of the World Bank; and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defence for intelligence and one of those most directly involved in the policies on prisoners, was still one of Rumsfeld's closest confidants. President Bush, asked about accountability, told the Washington Post before his second inauguration that the American people had supplied all the accountability needed - by re-electing him. Only seven enlisted men and women have been charged or pleaded guilty to offences relating to Abu Ghraib. No officer is facing criminal proceedings..."
Without The FOIA, We'd Never Know:
AP: Chicken Farmer, Invalid among Gitmo Detainees
"Some boast they were Taliban fighters. Others - an invalid, a chicken farmer, a nomad, a nervous name-dropper - say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were plucked from Afghanistan, Pakistan or other countries and flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their stories are tucked inside nearly 2,000 pages of documents the U.S. government released to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit..."
Friday, May 20, 2005
On Torture:
Accounts like this make the Pentagon's insistance on its just treatment of detainees ring especially hollow. The DoD and White House will have to intimidate many more journalists (e.g. Newsweek) to keep this out of the public domain...
NY Times: Report Uncovers Savage Killing of Afghan Inmates
"...The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.
In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.
In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.
The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths..."
British MP Tells It Like It Is:
Granted, Mr. Gallaway does not need to please any constituency here in the US, but why does it take an angry Scottsman to speak these facts in the US halls of power? Such bold language was never heard on Capitol Hill in the run up to war. Why is that?
George Gallaway: Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement
"...On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.
I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein.
As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his...'
...'The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.
Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.
- I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.
Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies,'..."
Accounts like this make the Pentagon's insistance on its just treatment of detainees ring especially hollow. The DoD and White House will have to intimidate many more journalists (e.g. Newsweek) to keep this out of the public domain...
NY Times: Report Uncovers Savage Killing of Afghan Inmates
"...The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.
In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.
In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.
The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths..."
British MP Tells It Like It Is:
Granted, Mr. Gallaway does not need to please any constituency here in the US, but why does it take an angry Scottsman to speak these facts in the US halls of power? Such bold language was never heard on Capitol Hill in the run up to war. Why is that?
George Gallaway: Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement
"...On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.
I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein.
As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his...'
...'The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.
Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.
- I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.
Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies,'..."
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Killing The Messenger:
Greg Palast: Cowardice in Journalism Award for Newsweek - Goebbels Award for Condi
"...Was there a problem with the story? Certainly. If you want to split hairs, the inside-government source of the Koran desecration story now says he can't confirm which military report it appeared in. But he saw it in one report and a witness has confirmed that the Koran was defiled.
Of course, there's an easy way to get at the truth. RELEASE THE REPORTS NOW. Hand them over, Mr. Rumsfeld, and let's see for ourselves what's in them.
But Newsweek and the Post are too polite to ask Rumsfeld to make the investigative reports public. Rather, the corporate babysitter for Newsweek, editor Mark Whitaker, said, 'Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges and so will we.' In other words, we'll take the Bush Administration's word that there is no evidence of Koran-dunking in the draft reports on Guantanamo.
It used to be that the Washington Post permitted journalism in its newsrooms. No more. But, frankly, that's an old story.
Every time I say investigative reporting is dead or barely breathing in the USA, some little smartass will challenge me, 'What about Watergate? Huh?' Hey, buddy, the Watergate investigation was 32 years ago - that means it's been nearly a third of a century since the Washington Post has printed a big investigative scoop.
The Post today would never run the Watergate story: a hidden source versus official denial...."
Again, What PNAC Askes For, It Gets:
Let's remember that so far, everything else PNAC has asked for in 2000 it's gotten on a silver platter:
* Invasion of Iraq
* Massive increase in the Pentagon budget
NY Times: Air Force Seeks Bush's Approval for Space Weapons Programs
"The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and Air Force officials.
The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space..."
Greg Palast: Cowardice in Journalism Award for Newsweek - Goebbels Award for Condi
"...Was there a problem with the story? Certainly. If you want to split hairs, the inside-government source of the Koran desecration story now says he can't confirm which military report it appeared in. But he saw it in one report and a witness has confirmed that the Koran was defiled.
Of course, there's an easy way to get at the truth. RELEASE THE REPORTS NOW. Hand them over, Mr. Rumsfeld, and let's see for ourselves what's in them.
But Newsweek and the Post are too polite to ask Rumsfeld to make the investigative reports public. Rather, the corporate babysitter for Newsweek, editor Mark Whitaker, said, 'Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges and so will we.' In other words, we'll take the Bush Administration's word that there is no evidence of Koran-dunking in the draft reports on Guantanamo.
It used to be that the Washington Post permitted journalism in its newsrooms. No more. But, frankly, that's an old story.
Every time I say investigative reporting is dead or barely breathing in the USA, some little smartass will challenge me, 'What about Watergate? Huh?' Hey, buddy, the Watergate investigation was 32 years ago - that means it's been nearly a third of a century since the Washington Post has printed a big investigative scoop.
The Post today would never run the Watergate story: a hidden source versus official denial...."
Again, What PNAC Askes For, It Gets:
Let's remember that so far, everything else PNAC has asked for in 2000 it's gotten on a silver platter:
* Invasion of Iraq
* Massive increase in the Pentagon budget
NY Times: Air Force Seeks Bush's Approval for Space Weapons Programs
"The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and Air Force officials.
The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space..."
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Shooting the Messenger:
This episode should be very familiar. It mirrors what was done to Dan Rather. The facts are not in dispute, rather the journalist is being taken to task over his methods.
It should be noted that the timing of this "outrage" from the side of the White House and Pentagon about the Newsweek story is a purposeful misdirection of the public's attention away from the story of the 2002 London Memo, which the Bush Administration is desperate to avoid answering for.
Molly Ivins: Don't blame Newsweek
"...There seems to be a bit of a campaign on the right to blame Newsweek for the anti-American riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Islamic countries.
Uh, people, I hate to tell you this, but the story about Americans abusing the Koran in order to enrage prisoners has been out there for quite some time...
...So where does all this leave us? With a story that is not only true, but previously reported numerous times. So let's drop the 'Lynch Newsweek' bull. Seventeen people have died in these riots. They didn't die because of anything Newsweek did -- the riots were caused by what our government has done.
Get your minds around it. Our country is guilty of torture. To quote myself once more: 'What are you going to do about this? It's your country, your money, your government. You own this country, you run it, you are the board of directors. They are doing this in your name. The people we elected to public office do what you want them to. Perhaps you should get in touch with them,'."
Democracy Now! - Former Detainees Have Repeatedly Accused U.S. of Desecrating Koran at Guatanamo
"AMY GOODMAN: ...Michael Ratner, can you talk about the Tipton Guantanamo detainees, those detainees who went back to Britain from Tipton?
MICHAEL RATNER: Right. You know, this story, it's almost like a kill the messenger story. Here, the United States has essentially been exploiting Muslim religion in its interrogations in Guantanamo for a long period of time, and all of a sudden, Newsweek does a retraction, not of actually what happened to the Koran, but in fact of whether it was mentioned in a military report that is about to be released about Guantanamo. And what's interesting to me is over a year ago, I was in London, in England, and I interviewed three of the Tipton people who had been released, and they told me very clearly stories of the abuse of the Koran. They talked about how it was kicked around on the floor, how it was thrown into the toilet. This is a year ago -
AMY GOODMAN: They told you directly?
MICHAEL RATNER: They told me directly. I interviewed them. They told me that directly. It's now contained in the Tipton report, which is up on the Center's website. You can read it there.
AMY GOODMAN: What's the website?
MICHAEL RATNER: CCR-NY.org. So it's all out there. It's not only out there because of that, the Kuwaitis were represented by an attorney in Washington following -
AMY GOODMAN: Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo?
MICHAEL RATNER: Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo filed a lawsuit, again claiming that the Koran was abused, that pages were torn out and thrown into the toilet. So this stuff is – it’s almost old news. And what’s happened here is the administration has latched onto something to try and really cover up its own utter abuse of Muslim religion. And you add to that the interrogation techniques that were actually approved by Rumsfeld at Guantanamo, and those are all about religious abuse. Those are about forcible shaving of Muslims. Those are about stripping of Muslims. Those are about exploiting phobias – these are words from Rumsfeld's own approved interrogation techniques – exploiting phobias, e.g., dogs. They are about taking away comfort items, e.g., religious items. So, we are talking about an entire system of interrogation that in part was based upon Muslim sensitivities..."
Boulder Daily Camera: Misplaced Outrage: Newsweek is not the Issue; Abuse of Detainees Is
"...No one has stepped forward to declare that the Quran incident is a fiction. More generally, no one can pretend any longer that the U.S. military simply would not engage in abuse and torture - not after the conviction of several participants in the Abu Ghraib atrocities, at least two dozen deaths attributed to torture, and plain evidence that the White House condones tactics prohibited by the Geneva Conventions when dealing with 'unlawful combatants.'
After all that, do Bush administration officials and their allies really believe that a magazine has damaged America's standing in the world? The Newsweek report could provoke such fierce reaction only because the past actions of the United States had made the allegations credible.
The American government diminishes this country's standing in the world, and its capacity to wage war against terrorism, when it resorts to physical and mental cruelty against detainees. That's an outrage. Don't blame the media for trying, however imperfectly, to shine a light on it."
This episode should be very familiar. It mirrors what was done to Dan Rather. The facts are not in dispute, rather the journalist is being taken to task over his methods.
It should be noted that the timing of this "outrage" from the side of the White House and Pentagon about the Newsweek story is a purposeful misdirection of the public's attention away from the story of the 2002 London Memo, which the Bush Administration is desperate to avoid answering for.
Molly Ivins: Don't blame Newsweek
"...There seems to be a bit of a campaign on the right to blame Newsweek for the anti-American riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Islamic countries.
Uh, people, I hate to tell you this, but the story about Americans abusing the Koran in order to enrage prisoners has been out there for quite some time...
...So where does all this leave us? With a story that is not only true, but previously reported numerous times. So let's drop the 'Lynch Newsweek' bull. Seventeen people have died in these riots. They didn't die because of anything Newsweek did -- the riots were caused by what our government has done.
Get your minds around it. Our country is guilty of torture. To quote myself once more: 'What are you going to do about this? It's your country, your money, your government. You own this country, you run it, you are the board of directors. They are doing this in your name. The people we elected to public office do what you want them to. Perhaps you should get in touch with them,'."
Democracy Now! - Former Detainees Have Repeatedly Accused U.S. of Desecrating Koran at Guatanamo
"AMY GOODMAN: ...Michael Ratner, can you talk about the Tipton Guantanamo detainees, those detainees who went back to Britain from Tipton?
MICHAEL RATNER: Right. You know, this story, it's almost like a kill the messenger story. Here, the United States has essentially been exploiting Muslim religion in its interrogations in Guantanamo for a long period of time, and all of a sudden, Newsweek does a retraction, not of actually what happened to the Koran, but in fact of whether it was mentioned in a military report that is about to be released about Guantanamo. And what's interesting to me is over a year ago, I was in London, in England, and I interviewed three of the Tipton people who had been released, and they told me very clearly stories of the abuse of the Koran. They talked about how it was kicked around on the floor, how it was thrown into the toilet. This is a year ago -
AMY GOODMAN: They told you directly?
MICHAEL RATNER: They told me directly. I interviewed them. They told me that directly. It's now contained in the Tipton report, which is up on the Center's website. You can read it there.
AMY GOODMAN: What's the website?
MICHAEL RATNER: CCR-NY.org. So it's all out there. It's not only out there because of that, the Kuwaitis were represented by an attorney in Washington following -
AMY GOODMAN: Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo?
MICHAEL RATNER: Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo filed a lawsuit, again claiming that the Koran was abused, that pages were torn out and thrown into the toilet. So this stuff is – it’s almost old news. And what’s happened here is the administration has latched onto something to try and really cover up its own utter abuse of Muslim religion. And you add to that the interrogation techniques that were actually approved by Rumsfeld at Guantanamo, and those are all about religious abuse. Those are about forcible shaving of Muslims. Those are about stripping of Muslims. Those are about exploiting phobias – these are words from Rumsfeld's own approved interrogation techniques – exploiting phobias, e.g., dogs. They are about taking away comfort items, e.g., religious items. So, we are talking about an entire system of interrogation that in part was based upon Muslim sensitivities..."
Boulder Daily Camera: Misplaced Outrage: Newsweek is not the Issue; Abuse of Detainees Is
"...No one has stepped forward to declare that the Quran incident is a fiction. More generally, no one can pretend any longer that the U.S. military simply would not engage in abuse and torture - not after the conviction of several participants in the Abu Ghraib atrocities, at least two dozen deaths attributed to torture, and plain evidence that the White House condones tactics prohibited by the Geneva Conventions when dealing with 'unlawful combatants.'
After all that, do Bush administration officials and their allies really believe that a magazine has damaged America's standing in the world? The Newsweek report could provoke such fierce reaction only because the past actions of the United States had made the allegations credible.
The American government diminishes this country's standing in the world, and its capacity to wage war against terrorism, when it resorts to physical and mental cruelty against detainees. That's an outrage. Don't blame the media for trying, however imperfectly, to shine a light on it."
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Are The Neo-Liberals Losing Their Stranglehold On Latin America?
BBC: Bolivians stage huge energy rally
"Police prevented the mainly indigenous demonstrators from entering the central square. There were a few clashes, but the march was largely peaceful.
Elsewhere, other protesters set up roadblocks on several key highways.
President Carlos Mesa refuses to sign the bill into law because he considers the level of taxes unworkable.
The law, already approved by Congress, would raise the taxes paid by foreign energy firms to 50% of their revenues.
President Mesa is backed by business groups, but opposed by peasants, coca farmers and trade unionists, who want the bill to be made stricter..."
How the Iraq War Started With A Lie:
Paul Krugman: Staying What Course?
"Is there any point, now that November's election is behind us, in revisiting the history of the Iraq war? Yes: any path out of the quagmire will be blocked by people who call their opponents weak on national security, and portray themselves as tough guys who will keep America safe. So it's important to understand how the tough guys made America weak.
There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the 'Downing Street memo' - actually the minutes of a British prime minister's meeting on July 23, 2002, during which officials reported on talks with the Bush administration about Iraq. But the memo, which was leaked to The Times of London during the British election campaign, confirms what apologists for the war have always denied: the Bush administration cooked up a case for a war it wanted.
Here's a sample: 'Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'
(You can read the whole thing at www.downingstreetmemo.com..."
G. Jefferson Price III: Sorry, Ms. Rice, but the Iraq war didn't come to us
"Somebody must have slipped an old script into Condoleezza Rice's hands while she was so busy getting packed into body armor for her surprise visit to Iraq on Sunday.
Some of the first words out of her mouth to U.S. troops there were: 'This war came to us, not the other way around.'
Huh? The Iraq war did not come to us. We brought the war to Iraq.
Remember 'shock and awe,' the war cry of President Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz (now a banker, thank God)? Ms. Rice was part of the shock-and-awe team back in those halcyon days when they all were lying to America about why we had to go to war against Iraq and just about everybody believed them.
Well, almost everybody. Saddam Hussein believed them. He was just as delusional on the issue of weapons of mass destruction - the main justification for the war we brought to Iraq - as was President Bush.
Here's what Mr. Hussein was not delusional about. He knew very well that he had nothing to do with al-Qaida's 9/11 attacks..."
America's Media Weakth But Democracy-Poverty:
Democracy Now! - Bill Moyers Responds to CPB's Tomlinson Charges of Liberal Bias: 'We Were Getting it Right, But Not Right Wing'
"In his first public address since leaving PBS six months ago, journalist Bill Moyers responds to charges by Kenneth Tomlinson - the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - of liberal bias and revelations that Tomlinson hired a consultant to monitor the political content of Moyers' PBS show 'Now.' We spend the hour playing an excerpt of Moyers' closing address at the National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis, Missouri (includes transcript)..."
BBC: Bolivians stage huge energy rally
"Police prevented the mainly indigenous demonstrators from entering the central square. There were a few clashes, but the march was largely peaceful.
Elsewhere, other protesters set up roadblocks on several key highways.
President Carlos Mesa refuses to sign the bill into law because he considers the level of taxes unworkable.
The law, already approved by Congress, would raise the taxes paid by foreign energy firms to 50% of their revenues.
President Mesa is backed by business groups, but opposed by peasants, coca farmers and trade unionists, who want the bill to be made stricter..."
How the Iraq War Started With A Lie:
Paul Krugman: Staying What Course?
"Is there any point, now that November's election is behind us, in revisiting the history of the Iraq war? Yes: any path out of the quagmire will be blocked by people who call their opponents weak on national security, and portray themselves as tough guys who will keep America safe. So it's important to understand how the tough guys made America weak.
There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the 'Downing Street memo' - actually the minutes of a British prime minister's meeting on July 23, 2002, during which officials reported on talks with the Bush administration about Iraq. But the memo, which was leaked to The Times of London during the British election campaign, confirms what apologists for the war have always denied: the Bush administration cooked up a case for a war it wanted.
Here's a sample: 'Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'
(You can read the whole thing at www.downingstreetmemo.com..."
G. Jefferson Price III: Sorry, Ms. Rice, but the Iraq war didn't come to us
"Somebody must have slipped an old script into Condoleezza Rice's hands while she was so busy getting packed into body armor for her surprise visit to Iraq on Sunday.
Some of the first words out of her mouth to U.S. troops there were: 'This war came to us, not the other way around.'
Huh? The Iraq war did not come to us. We brought the war to Iraq.
Remember 'shock and awe,' the war cry of President Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz (now a banker, thank God)? Ms. Rice was part of the shock-and-awe team back in those halcyon days when they all were lying to America about why we had to go to war against Iraq and just about everybody believed them.
Well, almost everybody. Saddam Hussein believed them. He was just as delusional on the issue of weapons of mass destruction - the main justification for the war we brought to Iraq - as was President Bush.
Here's what Mr. Hussein was not delusional about. He knew very well that he had nothing to do with al-Qaida's 9/11 attacks..."
America's Media Weakth But Democracy-Poverty:
Democracy Now! - Bill Moyers Responds to CPB's Tomlinson Charges of Liberal Bias: 'We Were Getting it Right, But Not Right Wing'
"In his first public address since leaving PBS six months ago, journalist Bill Moyers responds to charges by Kenneth Tomlinson - the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - of liberal bias and revelations that Tomlinson hired a consultant to monitor the political content of Moyers' PBS show 'Now.' We spend the hour playing an excerpt of Moyers' closing address at the National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis, Missouri (includes transcript)..."
Monday, May 16, 2005
The Environment:
NY Times: Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules
"Unsettled by a series of dry winters in this normally wet city, Mayor Greg Nickels has begun a nationwide effort to do something the Bush administration will not: carry out the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Mr. Nickels, a Democrat, says 131 other likeminded mayors have joined a bipartisan coalition to fight global warming on the local level, in an implicit rejection of the administration's policy.
The mayors, from cities as liberal as Los Angeles and as conservative as Hurst, Tex., represent nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to Mayor Nickels's office. They are pledging to have their cities meet what would have been a binding requirement for the nation had the Bush administration not rejected the Kyoto Protocol: a reduction in heat-trapping gas emissions to levels 7 percent below those of 1990, by 2012..."
On Torture:
SBS: US 'SENT DETAINEES TO EGYPT'
"The 53-page report by Human Rights Watch said Egypt is the world's main recipient of detainees.
The report, titled Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to Egypt, identifies 61 people who have been transferred into Egyptian custody since 1994.
However some experts quoted by the report say the actual number of people sent to Egypt is much higher, as such transfers usually occur in secret and without legal safeguards.
The report cites analysts, lawyers and Islamic activists who believe 150 to 200 detainees have been transferred since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
Those transferred to Egypt, most of them Egyptians suspected of Islamist militancy, include people believed to offer useful intelligence for US authorities in Washington's war on terrorism.
Others mentioned in the report were two Yemenis transferred to Egypt, one to Yemen and another to US custody at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
'Egypt ... has been the country to which the greatest numbers of rendered suspects have been sent,' said the report.
While most of the countries transferring detainees to Egypt are Arab or South Asian, Sweden and the US are also on the list.
'The person sent back to Egypt under these circumstances is almost surely going to be tortured,' Human Rights Watch deputy Middle East director Joe Stork said.
He said torture and other forms of mistreatment are so prevalent in Egypt that by sending detainees there, countries are violating the international convention against torture..."
Plenty of Money for The DoD:
NY Times: Senate Panel OKs Defense Spending Boost
"A Senate committee approved a $441.6 billion defense bill for fiscal 2006 that envisions spending an additional $50 billion next year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
'Our forces serving around the world are truly the first line of defense in the security of our homeland, and they deserve our strongest support,' Sen. John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said after the authorization bill passed on Friday.
'This bill provides our men and women in uniform and their families, the resources and authorities they need to successfully carry out their missions.'
The bill:
--Adds $1.4 billion over the president's budget request for force protection gear for service members.
--Authorizes $109.2 billion for military personnel, including costs of pay, allowances, bonuses, death benefits and permanent change of station moves.
--Authorizes the budget request of $3.4 billion for the Future Combat Systems program, including $231.6 million for the Non-line of Sight Launch System and $107.6 million for the Non-line of Sight Cannon.
--Authorizes $344.2 million for up-armored high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles and wheeled vehicle add-on ballistic protection to provide force protection for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The bill also authorizes $878.4 million for 240 Stryker vehicles. Critics of the Army's Stryker troop-carrying vehicle say it inadequately protects soldiers.
Congress had approved on Tuesday an additional $82 billion for war in Iraq and Afghanistan and to combat terror worldwide, boosting the cost of the global effort since 2001 to more than $300 billion.
The Senate approved the measure unanimously, 100-0. Earlier, the House of Representatives easily approved the measure. It now goes to President Bush for his signature, which is certain..."
NY Times: Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules
"Unsettled by a series of dry winters in this normally wet city, Mayor Greg Nickels has begun a nationwide effort to do something the Bush administration will not: carry out the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Mr. Nickels, a Democrat, says 131 other likeminded mayors have joined a bipartisan coalition to fight global warming on the local level, in an implicit rejection of the administration's policy.
The mayors, from cities as liberal as Los Angeles and as conservative as Hurst, Tex., represent nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to Mayor Nickels's office. They are pledging to have their cities meet what would have been a binding requirement for the nation had the Bush administration not rejected the Kyoto Protocol: a reduction in heat-trapping gas emissions to levels 7 percent below those of 1990, by 2012..."
On Torture:
SBS: US 'SENT DETAINEES TO EGYPT'
"The 53-page report by Human Rights Watch said Egypt is the world's main recipient of detainees.
The report, titled Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to Egypt, identifies 61 people who have been transferred into Egyptian custody since 1994.
However some experts quoted by the report say the actual number of people sent to Egypt is much higher, as such transfers usually occur in secret and without legal safeguards.
The report cites analysts, lawyers and Islamic activists who believe 150 to 200 detainees have been transferred since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
Those transferred to Egypt, most of them Egyptians suspected of Islamist militancy, include people believed to offer useful intelligence for US authorities in Washington's war on terrorism.
Others mentioned in the report were two Yemenis transferred to Egypt, one to Yemen and another to US custody at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
'Egypt ... has been the country to which the greatest numbers of rendered suspects have been sent,' said the report.
While most of the countries transferring detainees to Egypt are Arab or South Asian, Sweden and the US are also on the list.
'The person sent back to Egypt under these circumstances is almost surely going to be tortured,' Human Rights Watch deputy Middle East director Joe Stork said.
He said torture and other forms of mistreatment are so prevalent in Egypt that by sending detainees there, countries are violating the international convention against torture..."
Plenty of Money for The DoD:
NY Times: Senate Panel OKs Defense Spending Boost
"A Senate committee approved a $441.6 billion defense bill for fiscal 2006 that envisions spending an additional $50 billion next year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
'Our forces serving around the world are truly the first line of defense in the security of our homeland, and they deserve our strongest support,' Sen. John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said after the authorization bill passed on Friday.
'This bill provides our men and women in uniform and their families, the resources and authorities they need to successfully carry out their missions.'
The bill:
--Adds $1.4 billion over the president's budget request for force protection gear for service members.
--Authorizes $109.2 billion for military personnel, including costs of pay, allowances, bonuses, death benefits and permanent change of station moves.
--Authorizes the budget request of $3.4 billion for the Future Combat Systems program, including $231.6 million for the Non-line of Sight Launch System and $107.6 million for the Non-line of Sight Cannon.
--Authorizes $344.2 million for up-armored high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles and wheeled vehicle add-on ballistic protection to provide force protection for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The bill also authorizes $878.4 million for 240 Stryker vehicles. Critics of the Army's Stryker troop-carrying vehicle say it inadequately protects soldiers.
Congress had approved on Tuesday an additional $82 billion for war in Iraq and Afghanistan and to combat terror worldwide, boosting the cost of the global effort since 2001 to more than $300 billion.
The Senate approved the measure unanimously, 100-0. Earlier, the House of Representatives easily approved the measure. It now goes to President Bush for his signature, which is certain..."
Saturday, May 14, 2005
War Profiteering On The Dime of the Next Generation:
Matt Miller: Start a War, No Money Down!
"In the old days, war profiteering was a grueling round-the-clock job. You actually had to make something, like planes or guns, and then overcharge the government obscenely. Now, thanks to the Republicans, countless Americans are becoming 'war profiteers' in their spare time - and you can, too. Riches once thought to be the exclusive preserve of a few unsavory arms merchants have been made available to thousands of successful Americans, many of whom pull in the cash literally as they sleep!
What's their secret? With 'The Republican Guide to Wartime Tax Cuts,' you can find out what's in the playbook of Republican professionals. You'll get the war you want without laying out a dime, even as you benefit from huge tax cuts to boot (note: certain income thresholds apply).
And here's the kicker: you can slip the bill for all of this - both the war and your tax cut - to unsuspecting children!
I know what you're thinking: 'I don't have the self-confidence or social skills to reach for such dreams.' But here's the truth: neither did Republicans a few years ago. Yet just this week they came through again. On Wednesday, George Bush signed into law an additional $82 billion for Iraq, which brings the amount America has spent to oust Saddam Hussein and occupy the country close to $300 billion.
Now, whatever you thought about Saddam, the best news is this: we got this war for no money down and zero payments for 10 years. That's right: every penny spent on this war has been added to the deficit. And this latest $82 billion sailed through without a hitch, with no pesky questions as to whether we should actually pay for our own wars today..."
Iran:
Dilip Hiro: On the Iran Nuclear Crisis
The Environment:
Amanda Griscom Little: Cornerstone environmental law, NEPA, under fire in energy bill
"When the energy bill sailed through the House of Representatives late last month, the media reported that it was the same old grotesquely corpulent package that the GOP leadership had previously tried -- and failed -- to pass through Congress four times in the last four years. This is true. But what flew under the radar were a few new provisions snuck in at the 11th hour by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), chair of the House Resources Committee, which have made the bill even more environmentally threatening than previous versions, many Democrats and environmentalists say.
The environmental statute Pombo is targeting this time: the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, long considered a cornerstone of U.S. environmental law. NEPA requires all major projects on federal land -- from logging to highway construction to energy exploration -- to be reviewed for their potential environmental impact, and mandates a comment period during which the public can voice related concerns.
A Pombo-backed amendment sponsored by Rep. John Peterson (R-Penn.) and added to the bill the day before markup would allow energy companies to skirt NEPA requirements in a number of situations, with the aim of speeding energy development on federal land.
Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the House Resources Committee, told Muckraker it would grant the energy industry 'carte blanche to conduct drilling and exploration activities on public lands without any kind of meaningful environmental review, and remove the legal grounds for scientists, communities, and local governments to intercede. It is an affront to the American people,'..."
Nutrition, Corporate-Style:
Kathryn Mulvey: INDUSTRY’S INFLUENCE OVER FOOD PYRAMID HARD TO STOMACH
"Many of us greeted the unveiling of the government’s new food pyramid with a mixture of puzzlement and confusion. Indeed, the dizzying layers of rainbow-colored lines helped distract from the fact that the food industry’s fingerprints are all over the new dietary guidelines—in ways that hurt rather than help consumers.
What most people don’t realize is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) original vision for the pyramid included visual indicators to show people how often they should eat certain foods. Pastries and donuts, for example, would be marked 'occasional.' But these guidelines are now nowhere to be found in the new 'MyPyramid,' thanks to giant food corporations and their lobbyists.
Perhaps the most glaring evidence of the industry’s influence is the government’s refusal to recommend which foods not to eat, while putting a strong emphasis on individual responsibility. The only mention of unhealthy foods in new dietary guidelines is a gentle reminder to 'know the limits on fats, sugars and salts.' Also missing are recommendations limiting the amount of food people eat. Considering that 28 percent of American men and 34 percent of women are obese, this omission is especially troubling.
But it doesn’t stop there. The government didn’t budget for a PR campaign to get the word out about its new nutritional guidelines. So guess who’s coming to the rescue? The food industry. McDonald’s, General Mills, Philip Morris/Altria’s Kraft Foods, and other food titans barely waited for the ink to dry on the new guidelines before volunteering their own PR machines to 'raise awareness.' The Grocery Manufacturers of America—with members like Cargill and Philip Morris/Altria—also jumped in, offering to distribute posters and guides to reach 4 million kids..."
Matt Miller: Start a War, No Money Down!
"In the old days, war profiteering was a grueling round-the-clock job. You actually had to make something, like planes or guns, and then overcharge the government obscenely. Now, thanks to the Republicans, countless Americans are becoming 'war profiteers' in their spare time - and you can, too. Riches once thought to be the exclusive preserve of a few unsavory arms merchants have been made available to thousands of successful Americans, many of whom pull in the cash literally as they sleep!
What's their secret? With 'The Republican Guide to Wartime Tax Cuts,' you can find out what's in the playbook of Republican professionals. You'll get the war you want without laying out a dime, even as you benefit from huge tax cuts to boot (note: certain income thresholds apply).
And here's the kicker: you can slip the bill for all of this - both the war and your tax cut - to unsuspecting children!
I know what you're thinking: 'I don't have the self-confidence or social skills to reach for such dreams.' But here's the truth: neither did Republicans a few years ago. Yet just this week they came through again. On Wednesday, George Bush signed into law an additional $82 billion for Iraq, which brings the amount America has spent to oust Saddam Hussein and occupy the country close to $300 billion.
Now, whatever you thought about Saddam, the best news is this: we got this war for no money down and zero payments for 10 years. That's right: every penny spent on this war has been added to the deficit. And this latest $82 billion sailed through without a hitch, with no pesky questions as to whether we should actually pay for our own wars today..."
Iran:
Dilip Hiro: On the Iran Nuclear Crisis
The Environment:
Amanda Griscom Little: Cornerstone environmental law, NEPA, under fire in energy bill
"When the energy bill sailed through the House of Representatives late last month, the media reported that it was the same old grotesquely corpulent package that the GOP leadership had previously tried -- and failed -- to pass through Congress four times in the last four years. This is true. But what flew under the radar were a few new provisions snuck in at the 11th hour by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), chair of the House Resources Committee, which have made the bill even more environmentally threatening than previous versions, many Democrats and environmentalists say.
The environmental statute Pombo is targeting this time: the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, long considered a cornerstone of U.S. environmental law. NEPA requires all major projects on federal land -- from logging to highway construction to energy exploration -- to be reviewed for their potential environmental impact, and mandates a comment period during which the public can voice related concerns.
A Pombo-backed amendment sponsored by Rep. John Peterson (R-Penn.) and added to the bill the day before markup would allow energy companies to skirt NEPA requirements in a number of situations, with the aim of speeding energy development on federal land.
Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the House Resources Committee, told Muckraker it would grant the energy industry 'carte blanche to conduct drilling and exploration activities on public lands without any kind of meaningful environmental review, and remove the legal grounds for scientists, communities, and local governments to intercede. It is an affront to the American people,'..."
Nutrition, Corporate-Style:
Kathryn Mulvey: INDUSTRY’S INFLUENCE OVER FOOD PYRAMID HARD TO STOMACH
"Many of us greeted the unveiling of the government’s new food pyramid with a mixture of puzzlement and confusion. Indeed, the dizzying layers of rainbow-colored lines helped distract from the fact that the food industry’s fingerprints are all over the new dietary guidelines—in ways that hurt rather than help consumers.
What most people don’t realize is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) original vision for the pyramid included visual indicators to show people how often they should eat certain foods. Pastries and donuts, for example, would be marked 'occasional.' But these guidelines are now nowhere to be found in the new 'MyPyramid,' thanks to giant food corporations and their lobbyists.
Perhaps the most glaring evidence of the industry’s influence is the government’s refusal to recommend which foods not to eat, while putting a strong emphasis on individual responsibility. The only mention of unhealthy foods in new dietary guidelines is a gentle reminder to 'know the limits on fats, sugars and salts.' Also missing are recommendations limiting the amount of food people eat. Considering that 28 percent of American men and 34 percent of women are obese, this omission is especially troubling.
But it doesn’t stop there. The government didn’t budget for a PR campaign to get the word out about its new nutritional guidelines. So guess who’s coming to the rescue? The food industry. McDonald’s, General Mills, Philip Morris/Altria’s Kraft Foods, and other food titans barely waited for the ink to dry on the new guidelines before volunteering their own PR machines to 'raise awareness.' The Grocery Manufacturers of America—with members like Cargill and Philip Morris/Altria—also jumped in, offering to distribute posters and guides to reach 4 million kids..."
Friday, May 13, 2005
The Smoking Gun:
Greg Palast: Impeachment Time: "FACTS WERE FIXED."
"...For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, 'Isn't this grounds for impeachment?' -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a 'high crime or misdemeanor.'
And if this ain't it, nothing is.
The memo uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony.
A conspiracy to commit serial fraud is, under federal law, racketeering. However, the Mob's schemes never cost so many lives.
Here's more. 'Bush had made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.'
Really? But Mr. Bush told us, 'Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,'..."
Again, The World Bank Shows It's True Face:
Greg Palast: Ecuador Gets Chavez'd ... Bush has someone new to hate
"George Bush has someone new to hate. Only twenty-four hours after Ecuador's new president took his oath of office, he was hit by a diplomatic cruise missile fired all the way from Lithuania by Condoleezza Rice, then wandering about Eastern Europe spreading 'democracy.' Condi called for 'a constitutional process to get to elections,' which came as a bit of a shock to the man who'd already been constitutionally elected, Alfredo Palacio.
What had Palacio done to get our Secretary of State's political knickers in a twist? It's the oil--and the bonds. This nation of only 13 million souls at the world's belly button is rich, sitting on 4.4 billion barrels of known oil reserves, and probably much more. Yet 60 percent of its citizens live in brutal poverty; a lucky minority earn the 'minimum' wage of $153 a month.
The obvious solution - give the oil money to the Ecuadoreans without money - runs smack up against paragraph III-1 of the World Bank's 2003 Structural Adjustment Program Loan. The diktat is marked 'FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY,' which 'may not be disclosed' without World Bank authorization. TheNation.com has obtained a copy.
The secret loan terms require Ecuador to pay bondholders 70 percent of the revenue received from any spike in the price of oil. The result: Ecuador must give up the big bucks from the Iraq War oil price surge. Another 20 percent of the oil windfall is set aside for 'contingencies' (i.e., later payments to bondholders). The document specifies that Ecuador may keep only 10 percent of new oil revenue for expenditures on social services..."
Greg Palast: Impeachment Time: "FACTS WERE FIXED."
"...For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, 'Isn't this grounds for impeachment?' -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a 'high crime or misdemeanor.'
And if this ain't it, nothing is.
The memo uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony.
A conspiracy to commit serial fraud is, under federal law, racketeering. However, the Mob's schemes never cost so many lives.
Here's more. 'Bush had made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.'
Really? But Mr. Bush told us, 'Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,'..."
Again, The World Bank Shows It's True Face:
Greg Palast: Ecuador Gets Chavez'd ... Bush has someone new to hate
"George Bush has someone new to hate. Only twenty-four hours after Ecuador's new president took his oath of office, he was hit by a diplomatic cruise missile fired all the way from Lithuania by Condoleezza Rice, then wandering about Eastern Europe spreading 'democracy.' Condi called for 'a constitutional process to get to elections,' which came as a bit of a shock to the man who'd already been constitutionally elected, Alfredo Palacio.
What had Palacio done to get our Secretary of State's political knickers in a twist? It's the oil--and the bonds. This nation of only 13 million souls at the world's belly button is rich, sitting on 4.4 billion barrels of known oil reserves, and probably much more. Yet 60 percent of its citizens live in brutal poverty; a lucky minority earn the 'minimum' wage of $153 a month.
The obvious solution - give the oil money to the Ecuadoreans without money - runs smack up against paragraph III-1 of the World Bank's 2003 Structural Adjustment Program Loan. The diktat is marked 'FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY,' which 'may not be disclosed' without World Bank authorization. TheNation.com has obtained a copy.
The secret loan terms require Ecuador to pay bondholders 70 percent of the revenue received from any spike in the price of oil. The result: Ecuador must give up the big bucks from the Iraq War oil price surge. Another 20 percent of the oil windfall is set aside for 'contingencies' (i.e., later payments to bondholders). The document specifies that Ecuador may keep only 10 percent of new oil revenue for expenditures on social services..."
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Social Security:
Paul Krugman: The Final Insult
"Hell hath no fury like a scammer foiled. The card shark caught marking the deck, the auto dealer caught resetting a used car's odometer, is rarely contrite. On the contrary, they're usually angry, and they lash out at their intended marks, crying hypocrisy.
And so it is with those who would privatize Social Security. They didn't get away with scare tactics, or claims to offer something for nothing. Now they're accusing their opponents of coddling the rich and not caring about the poor...
...Let's consider the Bush tax cuts and the Bush benefit cuts as a package. Who gains? Who loses?
Suppose you're a full-time Wal-Mart employee, earning $17,000 a year. You probably didn't get any tax cut. But Mr. Bush says, generously, that he won't cut your Social Security benefits.
Suppose you're earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.
Suppose, finally, that you're making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year. We have a winner!..."
Paul Krugman: The Final Insult
"Hell hath no fury like a scammer foiled. The card shark caught marking the deck, the auto dealer caught resetting a used car's odometer, is rarely contrite. On the contrary, they're usually angry, and they lash out at their intended marks, crying hypocrisy.
And so it is with those who would privatize Social Security. They didn't get away with scare tactics, or claims to offer something for nothing. Now they're accusing their opponents of coddling the rich and not caring about the poor...
...Let's consider the Bush tax cuts and the Bush benefit cuts as a package. Who gains? Who loses?
Suppose you're a full-time Wal-Mart employee, earning $17,000 a year. You probably didn't get any tax cut. But Mr. Bush says, generously, that he won't cut your Social Security benefits.
Suppose you're earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.
Suppose, finally, that you're making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year. We have a winner!..."
Monday, May 09, 2005
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Going To War on Fabricated Intelligence - The Smoking Gun?
KnightRidder: Memo: Bush made intel fit Iraq policy
"A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.
The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.
The visit took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war.
'There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable,' the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD,' weapons of mass destruction.
The memo said 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'
No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
The White House has repeatedly denied accusations made by several top foreign officials that it manipulated intelligence estimates to justify an invasion of Iraq.
It has instead pointed to the conclusions of two studies, one by the Senate Intelligence Committee and one by a presidentially appointed panel, that cite serious failures by the CIA and other agencies in judging Saddam's weapons programs.
The principal U.S. intelligence analysis, called a National Intelligence Estimate, wasn't completed until October 2002, well after the United States and United Kingdom had apparently decided military force should be used to overthrow Saddam's regime.
The newly disclosed memo, which was first reported by the Sunday Times of London, hasn't been disavowed by the British government. A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington referred queries to another official, who didn't return calls for comment on Thursday.
A former senior U.S. official called it 'an absolutely accurate description of what transpired' during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
A White House official said the administration wouldn't comment on leaked British documents.
In July 2002, and well afterward, top Bush administration foreign policy advisers were insisting that 'there are no plans to attack Iraq on the president's desk.'
But the memo quotes British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, a close colleague of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, as saying that 'Bush had made up his mind to take military action.'
Straw is quoted as having his doubts about the Iraqi threat.
'But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran,' the memo reported he said.
Straw reportedly proposed that Saddam be given an ultimatum to readmit United Nations weapons inspectors, which could help justify the eventual use of force.
Powell in August 2002 persuaded Bush to make the case against Saddam at the United Nations and to push for renewed weapons inspections.
But there were deep divisions within the White House over that course of action. The British document says that the National Security Council, then led by Condoleezza Rice, 'had no patience with the U.N. route.'
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is circulating a letter among fellow Democrats asking Bush for an explanation of the document's charges, an aide said."
On Torture:
The Observer (UK) - Soldier lifts lid on Camp Delta
"An American soldier has revealed shocking new details of abuse and sexual torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay in the first high-profile whistleblowing account to emerge from inside the top-secret base.
Erik Saar, an Arabic speaker who was a translator in interrogation sessions, has produced a searing first-hand account of working at Guantánamo. It will prove a damaging blow to a White House still struggling to recover from the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
In an exclusive interview, Saar told The Observer that prisoners were physically assaulted by 'snatch squads' and subjected to sexual interrogation techniques and that the Geneva Conventions were deliberately ignored by the US military.
He also said that soldiers staged fake interrogations to impress visiting administration and military officials. Saar believes that the great majority of prisoners at Guantánamo have no terrorist links and little worthwhile intelligence information has emerged from the base despite its prominent role in America's war on terror..."
Marjorie Cohn: Team Bush Goes Unpunished for Torture
"[May 2] When the torture photographs began to emerge from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison one year ago, Bush said, 'Those mistakes will be investigated, and people will be brought to justice.' As fingers began to point up the chain-of-command, some prisoners were released and commanders were reassigned. Congress held hearings, investigations were undertaken, and some low-ranking soldiers were prosecuted. But those responsible for setting the policy that led to widespread and systemic torture of prisoners in United States custody remain uninvestigated and un-indicted.
Last week, the Army inspector general cleared four of the five top Army officers who oversaw prison policies and operations in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who authorized the use of vicious dogs to exploit 'Arab fear of dogs,' was exonerated, as was his deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowki. Col. Marc Warren, the command's top legal officer who failed to report abuses witnessed by the Red Cross to his boss for more than one month, escaped unscathed. And the report cleared Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, former chief intelligence officer in charge of the Abu Ghraib intelligence center, who failed to properly advise Sanchez about the management of interrogations.
Only Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was reprimanded. Although she was in charge of the prison, Karpinski was discouraged from visiting the cellblock where most of the torture occurred..."
Health:
AltHealth (UK) - Catalase and Breast Cancer
"...Catalase converts hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. Without sufficient catalase (or another enzyme called glutathione peroxidase), hydrogen peroxide spins off large numbers of hydroxyl radicals--considered the most dangerous type of free radical.
According to Kunihiko Ishii, M.D., of the Okayama University Medical School, Japan, an estimated 3 million Japanese men and women carry a genetic defect that prevents them from making adequate amounts of catalase. If a comparable (0.23) percent of Americans shared this genetic trait, more than 6 million people in [the UK] would also suffer from low-catalase production. People with insufficient catalase have serious trouble quenching the free radicals that damage their DNA.
In recent experiments, Ishii and his colleagues showed that mice with low or no catalase were especially prone to cancer. He then fed a strain of zero-catalase mice diets either enriched or deficient in vitamin E. He used vitamin E because it is a well-known antioxidant, and some studies have found it protective against breast cancer.
Without vitamin E, the zero-catalase mice had an 82 percent incidence of breast cancer. With vitamin E supplementation, the incidence was only 47 percent. Vitamin E also delayed the onset of breast cancer from 9 to 14 months, or by 35 percent. Aside from demonstrating the protective role of vitamin E in breast cancer, Ishii also showed that serious genetic defects may be partially overcome with supplements.
Unlike many scientists who hesitate to extrapolate animal research to people, Ishii took a very clear stand. He wrote that 'vitamin E intrinsically has a protective effect against the development of mammary tumors, and this may apply not only to the...mouse, but also to humans,'..."
Technology:
The Hindu: Don't flag down march of technology
"On Friday (May 6), in what seemed like a replay of that 20-year-old scenario, a U.S. Appeals Court unanimously threw out a regulation of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) — the U.S. Government's telecom regulatory body — that would have made it mandatory for all digital TV sets, video-burning personal computers and digital recorders sold after July this year to put in special technology called a 'Broadcast Flag'.
The 'Flag' is a bit of code that is placed in a digital television transmission that is meant to prevent the received signal from being copied or even viewed properly by sets that were not flag-compliant. In other words, if you want to set your TV set or PC-TV to copy your favourite programme as it is aired, so that you can see it later at leisure, you cannot do so.
The court ruling, however, says FCC has no authority to regulate consumer electronic devices that can be used for the receipt of radio or TV communications as long as they are not retransmitting the signals.
The challenge to the Flag technology mandated by the FCC after intense pressure by American broadcasters and film studios such as CBS and MGM came from consumer and library associations.
Their success, it is widely believed, is likely to be repeated, within a few weeks, when another case achieves a ruling: where MGM again is seeking to stop a peer-to-peer file-sharing technology put on the Internet by Grokster..."
KnightRidder: Memo: Bush made intel fit Iraq policy
"A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.
The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.
The visit took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war.
'There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable,' the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD,' weapons of mass destruction.
The memo said 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'
No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
The White House has repeatedly denied accusations made by several top foreign officials that it manipulated intelligence estimates to justify an invasion of Iraq.
It has instead pointed to the conclusions of two studies, one by the Senate Intelligence Committee and one by a presidentially appointed panel, that cite serious failures by the CIA and other agencies in judging Saddam's weapons programs.
The principal U.S. intelligence analysis, called a National Intelligence Estimate, wasn't completed until October 2002, well after the United States and United Kingdom had apparently decided military force should be used to overthrow Saddam's regime.
The newly disclosed memo, which was first reported by the Sunday Times of London, hasn't been disavowed by the British government. A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington referred queries to another official, who didn't return calls for comment on Thursday.
A former senior U.S. official called it 'an absolutely accurate description of what transpired' during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
A White House official said the administration wouldn't comment on leaked British documents.
In July 2002, and well afterward, top Bush administration foreign policy advisers were insisting that 'there are no plans to attack Iraq on the president's desk.'
But the memo quotes British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, a close colleague of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, as saying that 'Bush had made up his mind to take military action.'
Straw is quoted as having his doubts about the Iraqi threat.
'But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran,' the memo reported he said.
Straw reportedly proposed that Saddam be given an ultimatum to readmit United Nations weapons inspectors, which could help justify the eventual use of force.
Powell in August 2002 persuaded Bush to make the case against Saddam at the United Nations and to push for renewed weapons inspections.
But there were deep divisions within the White House over that course of action. The British document says that the National Security Council, then led by Condoleezza Rice, 'had no patience with the U.N. route.'
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is circulating a letter among fellow Democrats asking Bush for an explanation of the document's charges, an aide said."
On Torture:
The Observer (UK) - Soldier lifts lid on Camp Delta
"An American soldier has revealed shocking new details of abuse and sexual torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay in the first high-profile whistleblowing account to emerge from inside the top-secret base.
Erik Saar, an Arabic speaker who was a translator in interrogation sessions, has produced a searing first-hand account of working at Guantánamo. It will prove a damaging blow to a White House still struggling to recover from the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
In an exclusive interview, Saar told The Observer that prisoners were physically assaulted by 'snatch squads' and subjected to sexual interrogation techniques and that the Geneva Conventions were deliberately ignored by the US military.
He also said that soldiers staged fake interrogations to impress visiting administration and military officials. Saar believes that the great majority of prisoners at Guantánamo have no terrorist links and little worthwhile intelligence information has emerged from the base despite its prominent role in America's war on terror..."
Marjorie Cohn: Team Bush Goes Unpunished for Torture
"[May 2] When the torture photographs began to emerge from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison one year ago, Bush said, 'Those mistakes will be investigated, and people will be brought to justice.' As fingers began to point up the chain-of-command, some prisoners were released and commanders were reassigned. Congress held hearings, investigations were undertaken, and some low-ranking soldiers were prosecuted. But those responsible for setting the policy that led to widespread and systemic torture of prisoners in United States custody remain uninvestigated and un-indicted.
Last week, the Army inspector general cleared four of the five top Army officers who oversaw prison policies and operations in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who authorized the use of vicious dogs to exploit 'Arab fear of dogs,' was exonerated, as was his deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowki. Col. Marc Warren, the command's top legal officer who failed to report abuses witnessed by the Red Cross to his boss for more than one month, escaped unscathed. And the report cleared Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, former chief intelligence officer in charge of the Abu Ghraib intelligence center, who failed to properly advise Sanchez about the management of interrogations.
Only Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was reprimanded. Although she was in charge of the prison, Karpinski was discouraged from visiting the cellblock where most of the torture occurred..."
Health:
AltHealth (UK) - Catalase and Breast Cancer
"...Catalase converts hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. Without sufficient catalase (or another enzyme called glutathione peroxidase), hydrogen peroxide spins off large numbers of hydroxyl radicals--considered the most dangerous type of free radical.
According to Kunihiko Ishii, M.D., of the Okayama University Medical School, Japan, an estimated 3 million Japanese men and women carry a genetic defect that prevents them from making adequate amounts of catalase. If a comparable (0.23) percent of Americans shared this genetic trait, more than 6 million people in [the UK] would also suffer from low-catalase production. People with insufficient catalase have serious trouble quenching the free radicals that damage their DNA.
In recent experiments, Ishii and his colleagues showed that mice with low or no catalase were especially prone to cancer. He then fed a strain of zero-catalase mice diets either enriched or deficient in vitamin E. He used vitamin E because it is a well-known antioxidant, and some studies have found it protective against breast cancer.
Without vitamin E, the zero-catalase mice had an 82 percent incidence of breast cancer. With vitamin E supplementation, the incidence was only 47 percent. Vitamin E also delayed the onset of breast cancer from 9 to 14 months, or by 35 percent. Aside from demonstrating the protective role of vitamin E in breast cancer, Ishii also showed that serious genetic defects may be partially overcome with supplements.
Unlike many scientists who hesitate to extrapolate animal research to people, Ishii took a very clear stand. He wrote that 'vitamin E intrinsically has a protective effect against the development of mammary tumors, and this may apply not only to the...mouse, but also to humans,'..."
Technology:
The Hindu: Don't flag down march of technology
"On Friday (May 6), in what seemed like a replay of that 20-year-old scenario, a U.S. Appeals Court unanimously threw out a regulation of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) — the U.S. Government's telecom regulatory body — that would have made it mandatory for all digital TV sets, video-burning personal computers and digital recorders sold after July this year to put in special technology called a 'Broadcast Flag'.
The 'Flag' is a bit of code that is placed in a digital television transmission that is meant to prevent the received signal from being copied or even viewed properly by sets that were not flag-compliant. In other words, if you want to set your TV set or PC-TV to copy your favourite programme as it is aired, so that you can see it later at leisure, you cannot do so.
The court ruling, however, says FCC has no authority to regulate consumer electronic devices that can be used for the receipt of radio or TV communications as long as they are not retransmitting the signals.
The challenge to the Flag technology mandated by the FCC after intense pressure by American broadcasters and film studios such as CBS and MGM came from consumer and library associations.
Their success, it is widely believed, is likely to be repeated, within a few weeks, when another case achieves a ruling: where MGM again is seeking to stop a peer-to-peer file-sharing technology put on the Internet by Grokster..."
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Will Bush Ignore These Scientists, Too?
NY Times: National Research Council: Bunker-Buster Bomb Plan Won't Work
"The Bush administration's plan to develop a nuclear weapon that could penetrate the earth and destroy underground enemy bunkers while minimizing civilian casualties is flawed, the National Research Council concluded in a report made public Wednesday.
The report said the weapon could not go deep enough to eliminate fallout, as some advocates have asserted, and it estimated that the victims in a nearby city could range from a few hundred to more than a million, depending on factors such as the weather and population density.
John F. Ahearne, an expert on nuclear arms who headed the 15-member committee that wrote the report, said an earth-penetrating weapon 'could kill a devastatingly large number of people.'
The report also said that trying to reduce fallout and civilian damage by making a very small weapon was impractical because its destructive force would be insufficient to destroy military targets..."
Taboo: Pictures of the Nation's War Dead:
LA Times: Pressured by FOIA Demands, Pentagon Releases Coffin Photos
"Reversing a policy under fire, the Pentagon released photographs Thursday of flag-draped caskets bearing American soldiers killed in combat.
The pictures, taken by military photographers, were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Ralph J. Begleiter, a University of Delaware professor and former CNN correspondent, who sought all photos of the caskets of soldiers who died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001.
The release reversed a policy that critics said had allowed Pentagon managers to conceal the reality of hundreds of coffins arriving home in U.S. military cargo planes..."
Desperation Setting In?
CBS4: How Far Will The Army Go?
"Last month the U.S. Army failed to meet its goal of 6,800 new troops.
Aware of this trend, David McSwane, a local high school student, decided he wanted to find out to what extent some recruiters would go to sign up soldiers who were not up to grade.
McSwane, 17, is actually just the kind of teenager the military would like. He's a high school journalist and honor student at Arvada West High School. But McSwane decided he wanted to see 'how far the Army would go during a war to get one more solider.'
McSwane contacted his local army recruiting office in Golden with a scenario he created. He told a recruiter that he was a dropout and didn't have a high school diploma.
'No problem,' the recruiter explained. He suggested that McSwane create a fake diploma from a non-existent school...
...The Army does not accept enlistees with drug problems.
'I have a problem with drugs,' McSwane said, referring to the conversation he had with the recruiter. 'I can't kick the habit ... just marijuana.'
'[The recruiter] said 'Not a problem,' just take this detox ... he said he would pay half of it ... told me where to go,'..."
NY Times: National Research Council: Bunker-Buster Bomb Plan Won't Work
"The Bush administration's plan to develop a nuclear weapon that could penetrate the earth and destroy underground enemy bunkers while minimizing civilian casualties is flawed, the National Research Council concluded in a report made public Wednesday.
The report said the weapon could not go deep enough to eliminate fallout, as some advocates have asserted, and it estimated that the victims in a nearby city could range from a few hundred to more than a million, depending on factors such as the weather and population density.
John F. Ahearne, an expert on nuclear arms who headed the 15-member committee that wrote the report, said an earth-penetrating weapon 'could kill a devastatingly large number of people.'
The report also said that trying to reduce fallout and civilian damage by making a very small weapon was impractical because its destructive force would be insufficient to destroy military targets..."
Taboo: Pictures of the Nation's War Dead:
LA Times: Pressured by FOIA Demands, Pentagon Releases Coffin Photos
"Reversing a policy under fire, the Pentagon released photographs Thursday of flag-draped caskets bearing American soldiers killed in combat.
The pictures, taken by military photographers, were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Ralph J. Begleiter, a University of Delaware professor and former CNN correspondent, who sought all photos of the caskets of soldiers who died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001.
The release reversed a policy that critics said had allowed Pentagon managers to conceal the reality of hundreds of coffins arriving home in U.S. military cargo planes..."
Desperation Setting In?
CBS4: How Far Will The Army Go?
"Last month the U.S. Army failed to meet its goal of 6,800 new troops.
Aware of this trend, David McSwane, a local high school student, decided he wanted to find out to what extent some recruiters would go to sign up soldiers who were not up to grade.
McSwane, 17, is actually just the kind of teenager the military would like. He's a high school journalist and honor student at Arvada West High School. But McSwane decided he wanted to see 'how far the Army would go during a war to get one more solider.'
McSwane contacted his local army recruiting office in Golden with a scenario he created. He told a recruiter that he was a dropout and didn't have a high school diploma.
'No problem,' the recruiter explained. He suggested that McSwane create a fake diploma from a non-existent school...
...The Army does not accept enlistees with drug problems.
'I have a problem with drugs,' McSwane said, referring to the conversation he had with the recruiter. 'I can't kick the habit ... just marijuana.'
'[The recruiter] said 'Not a problem,' just take this detox ... he said he would pay half of it ... told me where to go,'..."
Monday, May 02, 2005
Social Security 'Reform,' or The Ideological War On A Popular Program:
Paul Krugman: A Gut Punch to the Middle
"By now, every journalist should know that you have to carefully check out any scheme coming from the White House. You can't just accept the administration's version of what it's doing. Remember, these are the people who named a big giveaway to logging interests 'Healthy Forests.'
Sure enough, a close look at President Bush's proposal for 'progressive price indexing' of Social Security puts the lie to claims that it's a plan to increase benefits for the poor and cut them for the wealthy. In fact, it's a plan to slash middle-class benefits; the wealthy would barely feel a thing.
Under current law, low-wage workers receive Social Security benefits equal to 49 percent of their wages before retirement. Under the Bush scheme, that wouldn't change. So benefits for the poor would be maintained, not increased.
The administration and its apologists emphasize the fact that under the Bush plan, workers earning higher wages would face cuts, and they talk as if that makes it a plan that takes from the rich and gives to the poor. But the rich wouldn't feel any pain, because people with high incomes don't depend on Social Security benefits...
...The important thing to understand is that the attempt to turn Social Security into nothing but a program for the poor isn't driven by concerns about the future budget burden of benefit payments. After all, if Mr. Bush was worried about the budget, he would be reconsidering his tax cuts.
No, this is about ideology: Mr. Bush comes to bury Social Security, not to save it. His goal is to turn F.D.R.'s most durable achievement into an unpopular welfare program, so some future president will be able to attack it with tall tales about Social Security queens driving Cadillacs."
Stirling Newberry: Rove's Revolution
"It won't be written on in the New York Times, nor will it be read by a newscaster on Fox News, but the left deserves to pat itself on the back and say 'I told you so' about one of the most important events of recent years. I remember being in Florida during the election fight of 2000, holding a sign that said 'Federal Constitution RIP.' In the weeks that followed, the television told the story that it had been a 'tie election,' and pundits duly noted that Bush would have to 'govern from the center,' since he had a thin majority in the House, and the Senate was divided equally. The conventional wisdom of the day was that we were to have moderate, almost divided government. The view from the ground level was very different: even then, Bush was perceived as a radical, surrounded by radical advisors, who would not govern from the center, as befits someone who has barely squeaked into power, but from the hard right. The often-expressed fear was that Bush and his circle intended to change the very nature of America's constitutional order..."
PBS In the GOP's Crosshairs:
As if the commerical media were not a sufficiently effective lapdog, the GOP is bent on their message appearing everywhere...
NY Times: Republican Chairman Exerts Pressure on PBS, Alleging Biases
"The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.
Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, 'Now With Bill Moyers,'..."
For Bush, Regulations Are The Enemy He Won't Openly Oppose:
Why be open, when underhanded tactics will do?
Rolling Stone: Bush's Most Radical Plan Yet
"If you've got something to hide in Washington, the best place to bury it is in the federal budget. The spending plan that President Bush submitted to Congress this year contains 2,000 pages that outline funding to safeguard the environment, protect workers from injury and death, crack down on securities fraud and ensure the safety of prescription drugs. But almost unnoticed in the budget, tucked away in a single paragraph, is a provision that could make every one of those protections a thing of the past.
The proposal, spelled out in three short sentences, would give the president the power to appoint an eight-member panel called the 'Sunset Commission,' which would systematically review federal programs every ten years and decide whether they should be eliminated. Any programs that are not 'producing results,' in the eyes of the commission, would 'automatically terminate unless the Congress took action to continue them.'
The administration portrays the commission as a well-intentioned effort to make sure that federal agencies are actually doing their job. 'We just think it makes sense,' says Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, which crafted the provision. 'The goal isn't to get rid of a program -- it's to make it work better.'
In practice, however, the commission would enable the Bush administration to achieve what Ronald Reagan only dreamed of: the end of government regulation as we know it. With a simple vote of five commissioners -- many of them likely to be lobbyists and executives from major corporations currently subject to federal oversight -- the president could terminate any program or agency he dislikes. No more Environmental Protection Agency. No more Food and Drug Administration. No more Securities and Exchange Commission..."
Paul Krugman: A Gut Punch to the Middle
"By now, every journalist should know that you have to carefully check out any scheme coming from the White House. You can't just accept the administration's version of what it's doing. Remember, these are the people who named a big giveaway to logging interests 'Healthy Forests.'
Sure enough, a close look at President Bush's proposal for 'progressive price indexing' of Social Security puts the lie to claims that it's a plan to increase benefits for the poor and cut them for the wealthy. In fact, it's a plan to slash middle-class benefits; the wealthy would barely feel a thing.
Under current law, low-wage workers receive Social Security benefits equal to 49 percent of their wages before retirement. Under the Bush scheme, that wouldn't change. So benefits for the poor would be maintained, not increased.
The administration and its apologists emphasize the fact that under the Bush plan, workers earning higher wages would face cuts, and they talk as if that makes it a plan that takes from the rich and gives to the poor. But the rich wouldn't feel any pain, because people with high incomes don't depend on Social Security benefits...
...The important thing to understand is that the attempt to turn Social Security into nothing but a program for the poor isn't driven by concerns about the future budget burden of benefit payments. After all, if Mr. Bush was worried about the budget, he would be reconsidering his tax cuts.
No, this is about ideology: Mr. Bush comes to bury Social Security, not to save it. His goal is to turn F.D.R.'s most durable achievement into an unpopular welfare program, so some future president will be able to attack it with tall tales about Social Security queens driving Cadillacs."
Stirling Newberry: Rove's Revolution
"It won't be written on in the New York Times, nor will it be read by a newscaster on Fox News, but the left deserves to pat itself on the back and say 'I told you so' about one of the most important events of recent years. I remember being in Florida during the election fight of 2000, holding a sign that said 'Federal Constitution RIP.' In the weeks that followed, the television told the story that it had been a 'tie election,' and pundits duly noted that Bush would have to 'govern from the center,' since he had a thin majority in the House, and the Senate was divided equally. The conventional wisdom of the day was that we were to have moderate, almost divided government. The view from the ground level was very different: even then, Bush was perceived as a radical, surrounded by radical advisors, who would not govern from the center, as befits someone who has barely squeaked into power, but from the hard right. The often-expressed fear was that Bush and his circle intended to change the very nature of America's constitutional order..."
PBS In the GOP's Crosshairs:
As if the commerical media were not a sufficiently effective lapdog, the GOP is bent on their message appearing everywhere...
NY Times: Republican Chairman Exerts Pressure on PBS, Alleging Biases
"The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.
Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, 'Now With Bill Moyers,'..."
For Bush, Regulations Are The Enemy He Won't Openly Oppose:
Why be open, when underhanded tactics will do?
Rolling Stone: Bush's Most Radical Plan Yet
"If you've got something to hide in Washington, the best place to bury it is in the federal budget. The spending plan that President Bush submitted to Congress this year contains 2,000 pages that outline funding to safeguard the environment, protect workers from injury and death, crack down on securities fraud and ensure the safety of prescription drugs. But almost unnoticed in the budget, tucked away in a single paragraph, is a provision that could make every one of those protections a thing of the past.
The proposal, spelled out in three short sentences, would give the president the power to appoint an eight-member panel called the 'Sunset Commission,' which would systematically review federal programs every ten years and decide whether they should be eliminated. Any programs that are not 'producing results,' in the eyes of the commission, would 'automatically terminate unless the Congress took action to continue them.'
The administration portrays the commission as a well-intentioned effort to make sure that federal agencies are actually doing their job. 'We just think it makes sense,' says Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, which crafted the provision. 'The goal isn't to get rid of a program -- it's to make it work better.'
In practice, however, the commission would enable the Bush administration to achieve what Ronald Reagan only dreamed of: the end of government regulation as we know it. With a simple vote of five commissioners -- many of them likely to be lobbyists and executives from major corporations currently subject to federal oversight -- the president could terminate any program or agency he dislikes. No more Environmental Protection Agency. No more Food and Drug Administration. No more Securities and Exchange Commission..."
Sunday, May 01, 2005
The Other Shoe Drops - The Lie That Supported the Case for War:
NY Times Editorial: Puncturing Another Weapons Myth
"The last refuge of those who continue to insist that Saddam Hussein must have had weapons of mass destruction was virtually eliminated by the chief weapons inspector this week. Not willing to accept the unpalatable truth that the search for W.M.D. in Iraq had come up empty, die-hard supporters of the war had clung to the possibility that Mr. Hussein might have shipped his weapons off to Syria to avoid their capture. Never mind that American military leaders said that he could not have pulled that off during the war, when his regime was collapsing too fast to salvage much of anything, and that reconnaissance craft had seen no major arms shipments at the borders. Perhaps the wily dictator had spirited off the weapons before the war began.
The final report of the Iraq Survey Group, headed by Charles Duelfer, has now declared any mass transfer of illicit weapons improbable. That judgment came in a 92-page addendum that was released this week to tie up loose ends from the comprehensive no-weapons-found report issued by the investigators last fall. The investigators acknowledged that they had been unable to pursue reports that a Syrian officer had suggested collaborating with Iraq on W.M.D., but they said that all the Iraqi scientists interviewed had denied any knowledge of weapons' being secreted in Syria. The team deemed it 'unlikely' that any official transfer of W.M.D. to Syria had taken place but could not rule out the possibility that limited amounts of material had been transferred unofficially. That's too slim a reed to save the die-hards.
The new report provides a salutary reminder that the sanctions and weapons inspections imposed by the much-maligned United Nations had already reduced Iraq's weapons programs to impotence before the war was launched to eliminate them. Too bad John Bolton, the administration's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, is likely to continue underestimating the U.N.'s potential and to repeat old errors of hyping weapons estimates.
In a recent Times article, Douglas Jehl reported that Mr. Bolton repeatedly clashed with intelligence officials in 2002 and 2003 because they thought he was stretching the evidence as he sought to deliver public warnings about Syria's pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Syria is clearly a bad actor that shipped military and civilian material to Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions. But policy makers need to keep the threat in perspective lest they be sucked in again by their own exaggerations."
NY Times Editorial: Puncturing Another Weapons Myth
"The last refuge of those who continue to insist that Saddam Hussein must have had weapons of mass destruction was virtually eliminated by the chief weapons inspector this week. Not willing to accept the unpalatable truth that the search for W.M.D. in Iraq had come up empty, die-hard supporters of the war had clung to the possibility that Mr. Hussein might have shipped his weapons off to Syria to avoid their capture. Never mind that American military leaders said that he could not have pulled that off during the war, when his regime was collapsing too fast to salvage much of anything, and that reconnaissance craft had seen no major arms shipments at the borders. Perhaps the wily dictator had spirited off the weapons before the war began.
The final report of the Iraq Survey Group, headed by Charles Duelfer, has now declared any mass transfer of illicit weapons improbable. That judgment came in a 92-page addendum that was released this week to tie up loose ends from the comprehensive no-weapons-found report issued by the investigators last fall. The investigators acknowledged that they had been unable to pursue reports that a Syrian officer had suggested collaborating with Iraq on W.M.D., but they said that all the Iraqi scientists interviewed had denied any knowledge of weapons' being secreted in Syria. The team deemed it 'unlikely' that any official transfer of W.M.D. to Syria had taken place but could not rule out the possibility that limited amounts of material had been transferred unofficially. That's too slim a reed to save the die-hards.
The new report provides a salutary reminder that the sanctions and weapons inspections imposed by the much-maligned United Nations had already reduced Iraq's weapons programs to impotence before the war was launched to eliminate them. Too bad John Bolton, the administration's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, is likely to continue underestimating the U.N.'s potential and to repeat old errors of hyping weapons estimates.
In a recent Times article, Douglas Jehl reported that Mr. Bolton repeatedly clashed with intelligence officials in 2002 and 2003 because they thought he was stretching the evidence as he sought to deliver public warnings about Syria's pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Syria is clearly a bad actor that shipped military and civilian material to Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions. But policy makers need to keep the threat in perspective lest they be sucked in again by their own exaggerations."
